YOU ARE THE CHOCOATE PINON OF THE EARTH

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©

We like to shop locally, especially now that we live in Bloomington, IN, where we have a world-famous farmer’s market, with 60 stalls of flowers and vegetables and meat, and groups of dancers, and strolling musicians of all ages and instruments, and stand-up comedians, and dogs and babies that entertain just by being there. Sometimes there are flash mobs, like twenty violas. There aren’t many places you can see a twenty-viola flash mob. Best of all, coffee, and baked everything. If you can’t find it at our farmer’s market, it’s not worth having.

Except for chocolate pinon coffee. It’s not at the farmer’s market. It’s not at Blooming Foods. It’s not at Lucky’s Market. It’s only available from Santa Fe Roasters. No, they aren’t in Santa Fe. My brother’s wife, Millie, who lives in Santa Fe, was quite discombobulated to learn that Santa Fe Roasters are actually in Little Chute, WI.

Coffee is just so much better if you add a scoop of chocolate pinon to the pot. It takes so little, and the change is not earth-shattering, but it makes so much difference in the taste.

The world is a coffee pot, and just a little Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi or Jonas Salk makes the taste so much better. Today, we should remember Martin Luther King, Jr. as part of that list.

I suspect if Jesus were teaching here, today, he would say, to each and all of us who try to follow him, “You are the chocolate pinon of the earth…” [Matthew 5:13]

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

My new novel is VETS, about four homeless Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor, is available from your local independent book store, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BOKO, Books-A-Million, Black Opal Books, and almost any place else that sells books. $8.49 or $12.99 for paperback, according to which site you look at, and $3.99 for Kindle. Free if you can get your library to buy one.